ON THE 

Road to 
Rome 

AND HOW 
TWO 

BROTHERS 
GOT THERE 

BY __ 

WILLIAM 

:har[)s, 



BX 

4662 

Tis 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 
©pr|i. — CqiJjvwfyt ¥}$+ • 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



ON THE ROAD TO ROME, 



How Two Brothers Got There. 



WILLIAM RICHARDS. 




/ 



2> 



NEW YORK, CINCINNATI, CHICAGO: 

BENZIGER BROTHERS, 

Printers to the Holy Apostolic See. 
1895. 









Copyright, 1895, by Benziger Brothers. 






INTRODUCTORY. 



In the Fall of 1886 it was arranged at 
one of the weekly meetings of Carroll 
Institute, in Washington City, D. C, that 
addresses should be given from time to 
time by members of the Institute, present- 
ing reminiscences of the Catholic Church 
in the State from which the speaker 
came. As I was a native of Ohio, it fell 
to me to treat the subject with reference 
to that State. Accordingly I prepared 
an address which I delivered before the 
Institute on the evening of January 6, 
1887. Subsequently the Institute, re- 
sponding to the effort to raise funds for 
the Brownson monument, invited me 
to repeat the address. I cheerfully ac- 



4 Introductory. 

cepted the invitation out of devotion to 
the memory of Brownson; and accord- 
ingly, on the evening of March 20, 1887, 
I repeated the address with considerable 
additions. It is now offered to the public 
substantially in the form as last delivered, 
though with some verbal changes, and 
some additions, the most of which will 
be found appended in notes. 

Washington, D. C. , March 10, 1895. 



ON THE ROAD TO ROME. 



AN ADDRESS. 



Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen: 

When on a former occasion I read a por- 
tion of this address before Carroll Insti- 
tute, I explained that I could not, as re- 
quested, give any " Reminiscences of the 
Catholic Church in Ohio" — my native 
State — because it had so happened that I 
had never entered a Catholic church but 
once before I accepted the faith, and soon 
thereafter had emigrated to Keokuk, 
Iowa, and therefore my reminiscences 
had to partake more of a personal than a 
local nature, and would more properly 
be entitled : How and Why I Became a 



6 On the Road to Rome. 

Catholic. This title indicates what many 
of you know, that I was not born a Cath- 
olic. 

It was my lot to be born and brought 
up in the small village of Granville, in 
central Ohio, which with one or two ad- 
joining townships had been settled in 
1805 by a colony of about one hundred 
families, who were mostly emigrants 
from the town of Granville, Mass. The 
majority of them were sturdy believers 
in the Westminster Catechism, and 
worthy descendants of New England 
Puritans — honest, sober, industrious, 
and thrifty, their religion being deeply 
pervaded by the sourness of Calvinism. 
It followed that I imbibed their views, 
feelings, and prejudices, and was not fur- 
nished with any instruction or traditions 
that were favorable to Roman Catholics. 
As a schoolboy, the first thing put into 
my hands was the " Little Primer," from 



On the Road to Rome. 7 

which children learned their A B C's in 
such couplets as: " In Adam's fall, We 
sinned all," illustrated by a large letter A 
and a small picture of Adam, and similar 
couplets for every letter in the alphabet, 
which were easily learned and rarely for- 
gotten. 

I mention this primer because I retain 
a vivid remembrance of its thrilling pic- 
ture of the so-called Protestant martyr, 
John Rogers, tied to a stake, standing in 
the midst of flames rising from a pile of 
blazing fagots, and gazed upon by his 
persecutors, and also by his weeping wife, 
who stood there, as the legend read, 
" with nine small children and one at 
the breast." This terrible scene was 
given as an awful example of the perse- 
cuting tyranny of that English queen 
whom the Protestants called " Bloody 
Mary." In the contemplation of that 
soul-harrowing picture, and the short 



8 On the Road to Rome. 

story explaining it, it was natural that 
the youthful mind should conceive a 
vague horror of Catholics and their re- 
ligion. 

Connected with that early period of my 
life is another reminiscence which left its 
indelible impression. One day the star- 
tling report flew through our town and 
county as on the wings of the wind — for 
the telegraph was not then thought of — 
that one Peter Diamond, living in the 
woods, some four or five miles south of 
our village, had got into a fight and 
killed his man. This in itself was hor- 
rifying in a law - abiding community, 
where even justifiable homicide had 
scarcely ever been known to occur. But 
when it was eagerly told, though with 
bated breath, that Peter Diamond was a 
Papist and, before the affray, had ac- 
tually gone to the adjoining county of 
Perry — where the Dominicans had a 



On the Road to Rome. - 9 

house at Somerset — and had paid a Roman 
Catholic priest for permission to commit 
this murder, getting pardon for the sin 
in advance, perhaps you can imagine the 
horror it inspired.* 

And yet I seem to remember how the 
question rose and silently worked in my 
youthful mind : " Can it be possible that 
anybody can teach or believe in pardon 
for future sin, or believe that Almighty 
God will ratify such an arrangement at 
the judgment day?" Of course, I got no 
answer then, but continued for many 
years to have false views and bitter prej- 



* Peter Diamond was tried, convicted, and sen- 
tenced to be hung, and when, on the day appointed 
(October 14, 1825), he stood on the scaffold, at 
Newark, with the rope round his neck, the Deputy 
Sheriff appeared at the last moment from Columbus, 
pushing his way through the crowd on his foaming 
steed, waving the reprieve of the Governor, much to 
the disappointment of the thousands of people who 
had gathered in from four or five surrounding coun- 
ties to witness the hanging. 



io On the Road to Rome. 

udices against Roman Catholics instilled 
into my mind by all my surroundings. 
When I recall the subtle and powerful 
influences of such early teachings, I am 
not surprised that both men and women 
who have been subjected to them are so 
slow to believe that there is anything in 
Catholic teachings worthy of their atten- 
tion. 

In the days that I am now recalling, so 
firmly was the conviction imbedded in 
the minds of Protestants that Catholic 
doctrines were full of error, and the 
Catholic Church itself a corrupt and mori- 
bund or played-out institution, that even 
those of them who became dissatisfied 
" Seekers after Truth" scarcely ever 
thought of looking in that direction to 
find a solution of the tremendous ques- 
tions of human life that were perplexing 
and agitating their troubled souls. And 
the mischief was aggravated by the fact 



On the Road to Rome. 1 1 

that such men as Carlyle, Emerson, Al- 
cott, and various others who became 
leaders of thought in the non-Catholic 
world, confidently assumed and seemed 
never to suspect otherwise than that the 
hard absurdities of Calvinism and the 
other erroneous, incomplete, ridiculous, 
and illogical developments of Protestant- 
ism were genuine, orthodox Christianity. 
And this remark applies with equal force 
to men of a later date, such as Huxley 
and Ingersoll, whose names I mention 
because they are about my age, and are 
examples of men who had bigger doses 
of Calvinistic diet in their early days than 
I had, and unfortunately have not found 
or accepted the antidote as I did. It 
seems almost incredible that men of such 
general intelligence, and with such op- 
portunities of finding the truth as they 
have, should so utterly fail to discover 
that the perversities of Protestantism are 



12 On the Road to Rome. 

not genuine Christianity. And it is this 
thought that should inspire all Catholics 
with charity for those misguided people, 
even including Ingersoll, and urge us to 
make earnest and constant prayers for 
their enlightenment. I know from sad 
experience that a person brought up in 
the midst of such influences as I have in- 
dicated must inevitably be covered, as it 
were, with almost inexpugnable encase- 
ments, from which all the batteries of 
argument and logic rebound and roll off 
like water from the back of a duck in a 
rainstorm. How any human being es- 
capes from such an environment, and 
succeeds in making his way back into 
the bosom of Mother Church, is a ques- 
tion the answer to which is generally full 
of interest to Catholics, and especially to 
converts. 

Trusting to your kind indulgence, I 
propose to say a few words relating to 



On the Road to Rome. 13 

my own experience in this regard. And 
to begin with, it may seem to yon a little 
curious that probably the first step 
towards my return to the Old Church, 
and that of my elder brother, Henry L. 
Richards, was taken when the minister 
of our meeting — for we did not then say 
church — the Rev. Ahab Jinks, allowed 
carpenters and plasterers to work in fin- 
ishing his dwelling-house on the Sab- 
bath-day, his justification being that he 
was obliged to give up his hired house 
in a few days, and as winter was at hand 
he feared to lose a single working hour 
lest freezing weather should delay the 
.work and prevent the occupation of the 
house at the stipulated time. With the 
Puritan notion of the awful and solemn 
sacredness of the Sabbath-day, which 
stopped all work, and would not allow 
children to play or even laugh aloud, 
from sundown on Saturday night to sun- 



14 On the Road to Rome. 

down on Sunday night, you can imagine 
what commotion it caused in that congre- 
gation when it was known that the minis- 
ter was a Sabbath-breaker! A majority 
of men and women in the meeting cen- 
sured the minister, and insisted that he 
should retire. But there was a respecta- 
ble minority who recognized the necessity 
of the minister's action, and justified it 
on scripture grounds. The controversy 
became hot and raged for months, and 
furnished a striking example of the an- 
archy that must result when every mem- 
ber of a society or congregation asserts 
his own right to interpret the scriptures, 
and lay down the law, and become a Pope, 
for every other member. 

It was the utter lack of authority in this 
disturbance which led my father,* who 



* Dr. William Samuel Richards, born in New Lon- 
don, Conn., January i. 1787, settled in Granville in 
1811, and died there May 8, 1852. 



On the Road to Rome. 15 

supported the minister, to study the ques- 
tion of church government. The result 
was that he preferred the order and seem- 
ing authority of the Episcopal form of 
church government to the Congregational 
system based on irresponsible individual- 
ism, and he became an Episcopalian. 
Perhaps a dozen other heads of families, 
including the deposed minister, joined 
him in organizing an Episcopal church in 
1827. I recall the fact that he and his 
friends were subsequently confirmed in 
their choice by reading a little book pub- 
lished in 1832, entitled "An Apology for 
the Episcopal Church/' by Thomas S. 
Brittan, which, as I now remember it, 
contained the Catholic argument in sup- 
port of Episcopacy, so far as it went. 
My interest in this change consisted prin- 
cipally in the fact that we children were 
no longer required to wrestle with the 
dry and crabbed and forbidding pages of 



1 6 On the Road to Rome. 

the Westminster Smaller Catechism, in 
which I had just reached that long and 
awful paragraph on Predestination ; but, 
greatly to my joy and relief, were put to 
study the more simple and practical cate- 
chism in the Episcopal Prayer Book. 

I may say here, what of course I did 
not know then, that this Prayer Book was 
taken from the English Book of Common 
Prayer, which, in its Thirty-Nine Arti- 
cles and Forms of Service, was the result 
of a compromise between various parties 
holding the opinions of Churchmen, Cal- 
vinists, Lutherans, and others; and it 
contained in its Articles of Religion, its 
Catechism, its Offices of Baptism, Confir- 
mation, Communion, etc., a double set of 
principles — one set being Catholic and 
logically leading back to the Catholic 
Church from which they were derived, 
and the other set being radically Protes- 
tant, and, in the denial of Catholic 



0?i the Road to Rome. 17 

truths, leading logically to the denial of 
all authority and all faith. No doubt 
some of you are aware of the interesting 
fact that Cardinal Newman and his tal- 
ented and learned brother, who were at 
first evangelical or extremely low church 
members of the Established Church of 
England, separated in course of time — 
John Henry, the Cardinal, following the 
Catholic set of principles into the Catho- 
lic Church, and William Francis follow- 
ing the Protestant set into the denial of 
all faith. As I now recall the subtle 
power of the Protestant influences that 
surrounded and acted upon us every mo- 
ment of our lives, it seems to me little 
less than a miracle that my brother and 
I ever got out of the fogs of darkness and 
doubt, and were at last brought into the 
glorious light of the grand old Catholic 
and Apostolic Church. 

Another very important result of my 



1 8 On the Road to Rome. 

father's change was that my brother, 
who, at an early age, had " experienced 
religion/' as they called it in the Con- 
gregational meeting of our village, de- 
cided to study for the Episcopal ministry, 
and with that end in view went to Ken- 
yon College, an Episcopal institution at 
Gambier, Ohio, founded by Bishop Phi- 
lander Chase, where I joined him, and 
where we were graduated in the same 
class (1838). I can safely say that dur- 
ing our college course we heard very lit- 
tle about, and nothing favorable to, the 
Catholic Church. Afterward, however, 
while my brother was studying theology 
at the theological seminary at Gambier, 
there began to be discussions of the ques- 
tions that divided low from high church- 
men, and the latter from "Romanists." 
Upon being ordained, it was his fortune 
to be settled in a short time in Colum- 
bus, Ohio (1842), as the pastor of a high- 



On the Road to Rome. 19 

church congregation, which, by the way, 
was almost the only one of the kind in 
the State. There the standard works and 
arguments of the high church party be- 
came familiar to him through the zeal 
and kindness of his principal parishioner, 
Mr. Isaac N. Whiting, the well-known 
bookseller and publisher at Columbus; 
and as my brother was an honest-minded 
and logical seeker after truth, the prog- 
ress which he made in the right direc- 
tion was somewhat rapid, and in the end 
he went considerably further than his 
high church friends expected or desired. 
While my brother was thus running 
his course as a theologian and successful 
pastor of a parish, it was my fortune to 
follow a quite different course in pursuit 
of philosophy, history, political science, 
law, and practical politics. It is not nec- 
essary, and I do not intend, to inflict 
upon you my biography. Yet it will be 



20 On the Road to Rome. 

convenient to allude now and then to a 
prominent fact or event that may, as it 
were, be used as a peg on which to hang 
a sign indicating my progress to Rome — 
though, of course, I had then no more 
notion of going to Rome than I had of 
going to the moon. And thus it seems 
pertinent to mention that while I was 
making an extra course of study at my 
alma mater, principally under the in- 
struction of the Rev. Dr. William Spar- 
row, from Ireland — a learned and tal- 
ented man, and a most competent and 
thorough teacher, though a radical Prot- 
estant — it so happened that there was a 
"revival" among the students. It com- 
menced without preparation or special 
efforts — no one knew how. The first 
convert was a young student from Vir- 
ginia, named Kinsolving — his conversion 
from a rather wild and irreligious life 
having been so sudden and remarkable 



On the Road to Rome. 21 

as to attract attention. He is now (1887) 
a prominent Episcopal minister in Vir- 
ginia. Beginning in this way, the revi- 
val went on until nearly every student 
was counted as a "convert." The last 
month or two of the college year (1839) 
was given up mainly to this revival, as 
the saving of souls was considered of 
vastly more importance than mere learn- 
ing or any other earthly interest. 

I allude to this event, and mention the 
fact that I was one of the subjects, simply 
for the purpose of setting before you 
what was, and perhaps still is, the 
evangelical notion of "getting religion/' 
" Seekers" were diligently impressed with 
the notion that they must expect, seek, 
and pray for a "change of heart." And 
when, after a sharp struggle, sometimes 
short, and sometimes lasting days or 
weeks, one could at last get up in meet- 
ing and say with tears of joy, or without, 



22 On the Road to Rome. 

but with evident sincerity, that, "at such 
an hour and such a place — possibly be- 
hind a bio; loo; in the woods, or in the loft 
of the barn, or in the closet if he had 
one, or elsewhere — while agonizing and 
praying to the Lord, suddenly he was 
convicted, light came in upon his soul, 
and he felt happy," then he was regarded 
and received as a convert. He had " ex- 
perienced religion" ; he was no longer a 
mere worldling; he had come out from 
the world ; the old Adam was put off ; old 
things had passed away, and all things 
had become new! While the excitement 
of the revival lasted, there was a happy 
state of feeling. But it is not in the na- 
ture of man to keep up such excitement 
continuouslv. * In time, the tension 



* I remember that there was one young man there 
who had the good judgment to avoid all such excite- 
ment, and who said to himself, " This is the most im- 
portant matter that ever will or can engage my at- 



0?i the Road to Rome. 23 

must give way, and lassitude and cold- 
ness follow. Then came in many cases 
the surprising and painful discovery that 
the "change of heart" was not a radical 



tention, and I must decide it with a cool, calm 
judgment." And he very soon decided that it was the 
highest wisdom "to turn unto the Lord," and he did 
so, and he proved to be one of the most straightfor- 
ward, sensible, and zealous converts that I knew. 
Perhaps I may be pardoned for mentioning the case 
of another young man, who, greatly to my surprise, 
was brought to me, by a very zealous and pious 
church member, to receive instruction. I was very 
free to give him my views, and was afterward com- 
plimented by an old church member and a competent 
judge, who overheard my instructions (without my 
knowledge) , and pronounced them good. But I no- 
ticed that my pupil, though a good listener, said very 
little, and I never heard that he was "converted," 
though I did hear of him till the day of his death as 
a most excellent and conscientious man, a regular at- 
tendant at church, and always having a profound 
sense of right and of his duty to God. My theory of 
his case was that, with his cool judgment and correct 
conduct of life, he did not see the necessity or the use 
of going through the excitement that took hold of 
nearly every one of the converts. The name of the 
young man was Rutherford B. Hayes, afterward 
President of the United States. 



24 On the Road to Rome. 

change after all — that the old man Adam 
was not conquered and put off, and that it 
was still just as easy as of old to be 
wicked, to get angry, to lie, or swear, or 
slander, to have bad thoughts, or be 
worldly-minded. 

And the convert who held on for a 
time was not without difficulties. For he 
was sure to be plied with the doctrine of 
total depravity, and "justification by 
faith alone ;" and he would hear the zeal- 
ous preacher declare that "the whole 
head was sick and the whole heart faint," 
and that one could not "think a good 
thought or do a good deed," or if he did 
they would count for nothing, for he 
could not be saved by works, but by faith 
in the Saviour, whose merits would be 
"imputed" to him for righteousness 
which would envelop his " total deprav- 
ity" as with a white robe of purity. 
And then a reflective man would begin 



On the Road to Rome, 25 

to think that if he was totally depraved it 
would be folly to expect that radical 
change which he had been taught to look 
for. And so, when the reaction came, as 
it did with multitudes, the painful ques- 
tion would arise : " Was I converted ? If 
there had been a real ' change of heart' 
would I now be in this cold, unsatisfac- 
tory state?" To make a long story short, 
a majority or a large number of converts, 
wherever and whenever the revival oc- 
curred in those days, would generally be- 
come "backsliders," and very many of 
them would come to be counted among 
the reprobate or the unregenerate. 

How did I escape that result? The 
answer to that question is closely con- 
nected with the story of my progress to 
Rome. Before and after the revival in- 
terlude, I was making with Dr. Sparrow 
a diligent study of Cousin's lectures on 
the " History of Philosophy," his " Criti- 



26 On the Road to Ro?ne. 

cism of Locke on the Understanding/' 
and Dr. Lieber's "Political Ethics." I 
am not going to dwell upon the world of 
new ideas — grand and absorbing — which 
these studies opened up to me. For my 
present purpose it will suffice to recall 
Cousin's famous scheme of eclecticism, 
that is to say, of culling and selecting 
from each one of the numerous systems 
of philosophy its particular and un- 
doubted truth, and by skilfully putting 
together these various truths, construct- 
ing a harmonious whole, and calling it 
eclectic philosophy. I well remember 
how this suggested to me the ingenious 
scheme of selecting from each of the 
numerous Protestant sects that portion of 
truth which it held, and thus putting to- 
gether a collection of truths and practices 
which should be altogether free from 
error, and would constitute true Chris- 
tianity. Was it not a brilliant scheme? 



On the Road to Rome. 27 

You may at once infer from this that I 
had some difficulties about what consti- 
tuted the true faith, which were consid- 
erably increased when my reaction came 
on, though, thanks to the faithful teach- 
ings and good examples of my parents, I 
could not give up my belief in God ; and 
I had a vague sort of conviction that 
there must be some truth in the scheme 
of redemption if we could only get at it. 
But how to get at it was the question. 
Thus it was that the great question of 
authority began to loom up. How many 
years it was in taking definite shape in 
my mind and coming to a head, remains 
to be stated. 

A very important part of my course 
with Dr. Sparrow was, as already men- 
tioned, the study of Dr. Francis Lieber's 
great and celebrated work on " Political 
Ethics/' which came from the press late 
in 1838, and for a number of years held 



28 On the Road to Rome, 

its place at the head of works on political 
science. Time will permit me on this 
occasion to mention only two ideas or 
views which I obtained from that work, 
and which radically influenced the forma- 
tion of my solutions of certain great prob- 
lems of the day. 

The first was Dr. Lieber's complete 
refutation of that absurd theory, so much 
dwelt upon by Blackstone in his Com- 
mentaries, and by others in their discus- 
sions of the origin of the State, that the 
primitive condition of man was a " state 
of nature" or mere savagism — a state or 
condition in which poor, ignorant sav- 
ages lived without law or organized gov- 
ernment, in solitary and gloomy equality 
— the only government being that by 
club-law, or the law of the strongest. 
Erroneous as this theory was, yet philos- 
ophers had not then (1839-40) devel- 
oped the still lower, more erroneous, and 



On the Road to Rome. 29 

more absurd theory — so widely accepted 
by the so-called scientists of this day — 
that man originated in protoplasm, and 
after an indefinitely long period of time 
was gradually evolved through the mol- 
lusk into the tadpole, and from the tad- 
pole through various changes into the 
monkey, and from the monkey through 
other changes into the poor, ignorant 
savage. The nearest approach to that 
kind of science was, as I remember, the 
fanciful speculation of Lord Monboddo — 
which was received with incredulous 
laughter — that the monkey, by sitting 
on his tail, had gradually worn it down 
to a short stump, and while doing so 
had chattered himself into the savage 
man. 

But unfortunately the Blackstone the- 
ory of man in a "state of nature," out of 
which he slowly emerged through bar- 
barism by successive steps of improve- 



30 On the Road to Rome. 

ment, until he reached the highest civili- 
zation of the ancient nations, has left its 
mark upon nearly all the literature of the 
world for the last hundred years or more. 
It was this theory that Dr. Lieber at- 
tacked with vigor and successfully con- 
troverted, showing that there never had 
been such a condition as that imaginary 
" state of nature" — that man, as Montes- 
quieu said, is born in society and there 
must ever remain; that society was of 
divine origin equally with the indi- 
vidual man, and that it was ordained 
from the beginning that man should 
work out his destiny in this world, and 
for the next, only in and through so- 
ciety. 

This was the first idea which I learned 
from Dr. Lieber, and the second was sim- 
ply its logical development. For society, 
with its divine origin, necessarily culmi- 
nated in the State. And, therefore, the 



On the Road to Rome. 31 

State is not, in its origin, a voluntary as- 
sociation of savages who have become 
tired of club-law ; nor is it a co-partner- 
ship of shareholders to promote each 
one's selfish interest; nor an immense 
insurance company established for the 
protection of property, and incidentally 
" to look out that my neighbor does not 
pick my pocket" or cut my throat; nor a 
cunningly devised machine to grind out 
taxes and support the constable and the 
gallows. It is neither one nor all of 
these. For the State is aboriginal with 
man, and, jurally considered, is the soci- 
ety of societies in the temporal order, 
having an organic life of its own, which, 
in its identity and continuity, is distinct 
and palpable like that of the individual 
man. The individual, indeed, is above 
the State in that he is not limited to time, 
but is made to be a citizen of eternity. 
But then the State is above the individual 



32 On the Road to Rome. 

because, being the organism of society, 
it never dies, but lives on from age to 
age, embracing and sustaining all genera- 
tions of men in their unbroken conti- 
nuity. 

Now both of these ideas were of im- 
mense benefit to me in many ways — the 
first one by guarding me against the er- 
rors of any teacher or any book whose 
starting point and fundamental assump- 
tion was that the primitive condition of 
man was that of the low and ignorant 
savage ; for the theories on the origin of 
society, government, language, and relig- 
ion, flowing from such a source, are cer- 
tain to be mixed up with very serious and 
dangerous errors; — the only true theory 
being that in the beginning God made 
the heavens and the earth, and in due 
time ushered man into life, a grand and 
glorious being, whose nature, being fash- 
ioned in body and soul upon the idea of 



On the Road to Rome. 33 

the Incarnate Son,* as Father Faber said, 
"was beautiful in its perfection, but was 
clothed upon by the surpassing beauty of 
primeval grace and the radiance of 
original justice," and "the greatness of 
whose science was such that we can 
hardly form an idea of it to ourselves,'' 
while " the most startling miracles of the 
saints are but feeble indications and par- 
tial recoveries of that rightful and super- 
natural dominion over nature which man 
possessed and exercised" in his first es- 
tate, but whose sad and mournful history 
from the time of the fall down to the 
Christian era was one of gradual depart- 
ure from God's truth as given in the 
primitive revelation, involving loss of 



*For whom He foreknew. He also predestinated to 
be made conformable to the image of His Son : that 
He might be the first-born amongst many brethren. 
— Rom. viii. 29. 

And God said : Let us make man to Our image. 
— Gen. i. 26. 
3 



34 On the Road to Rome. 

control of the powers of nature, and more 
or less rapid decline in religion, in morals, 
in language, in art, in government, and, 
in short, in everything that was good and 
true and beautiful. 

And, secondly, immense benefit was 
derived from familiarizing the mind with 
the idea that society is a living organ- 
ism, an organized body, having an or- 
ganic life of its own, with a head, an 
office, a mission, as distinct as that of the 
individual. Those of you who have 
never had the misfortune of having been 
Protestants can scarcely conceive of the 
difficulty which Protestants had, in the 
days of which I am speaking, of forming 
to themselves any notion of the State or 
the Church as an organized body. Their 
congregations were simply meetings of 
individuals, each one asserting the un- 
limited right of private judgment, and 
their religious teachings being addressed 



On the Road to Rome. 35 

to each one as if he had merely a spiritual 
nature — "the scheme of redemption," or 
atonement, or at-one-vient, as Dr. Albert 
Barnes called it in his Commentaries, be- 
ing a scheme which did not necessarily 
call for the coming of a redeemer in the 
body — the only use they made of that fact 
being the sentimental one of appealing to 
our feelings in view of the great humility 
of the Redeemer in taking upon Himself 
the form of man, and voluntarily suffer- 
ing the pains and agonies of the crucifix- 
ion. This came to appear to me to be 
mere sentimentalism, and I was puzzled 
by the speculations of some Unitarians 
who held that we have nothing but a his- 
torical Christianity, which we can criticise 
at pleasure; while we may, indeed, if we 
choose, indulge an unbounded admiration 
for "the Christ" as a great and good and 
really wonderful historical person who 
lived nearly two thousand years ago ! 



36 On the Road to Rome. 

I had not then learned the profound 
truth that the Church is a continuous, 
ever-living, and teaching body, with all 
that that implies, and especially always 
having the Body and Blood of Our Lord 
ever present upon the altar, ever giving 
life to the humble and penitent commu- 
nicant. But, of course, it took me yet 
some years to see it in that light, though 
I readily perceive now how the ideas I 
gained from Lieber and Brownson on or- 
ganized society, and the views on the in- 
carnation which I had subsequently read 
in the writings of Hugh Davey Evans in 
"The True Catholic," were what Cole- 
ridge called " seed-thoughts" which took 
root and finally bore glorious fruit. In 
the mean time, however, other influences 
were working. 

Thus I find an old memorandum which 
reminds me that while studying law at 
the Yale Law School in 1842, I became 



On the Road to Rome. 37 

profoundly interested in Carlyle's book 
on " Heroes, Hero- Worship, and the He- 
roic in History. ,, I never have forgot- 
ten the surprise with which I read that 
passage in his lecture on " The Hero as 
Priest," wherein, after glorifying Luther 
and the Reformation, he started the ques- 
tion whether "popery" would ever come 
back again, speaking very contemptu- 
ously of the " Poor old Popehood" as if it 
were nearly dead, and giving his answer 
in this oracular manner, to wit: "The 
poor old Popehood will not die away en- 
tirely, as Thor has done, for some time 
yet ; nor ought it. We may say, the Old 
never dies till this happen : Till all the 
soul of good that was in it have got itself 
transfused into the practical New. While 
a good work remains capable of being 
done by the Romish form; or, what is 
inclusive of all, while a pious life remains 
capable of being led by it, just so long, if 



3 8 On the Road to Rome. 

we consider, will this or the other human 
soul adopt it, go about as a living wit- 
ness of it. So long it will obtrude itself 
on the eye of us who reject it till we in 
our practice too have appropriated what- 
soever of truth was in it. Then, but also 
not till then, it will have no charm more 
for any man. The Romish form lasts 
here for a purpose. Let it last as long 
as it can." 

How judicial, how oracular, how con- 
descending! But such was then Car- 
lyle's authority with me that this remark 
worked a small revolution in my Protest- 
ant notion that the Roman Catholic 
Church was so filled with erroneous doc- 
trine and corrupt practices that no soul 
need expect to find salvation there. 
Thenceforth, however, I no longer 
doubted that a " pious life" might be 
lived in that Church so as to secure salva- 
tion hereafter. This admission once 



On the Road to Rome. 39 

made, you can readily infer that the proc- 
ess of softening prejudice went on 
apace, though it was rather slow in its 
operation. 

Here would be the place, if I had the 
time, and you the patience to listen, to 
set forth at some length the results of the 
diligent study which I made during the 
years 1842-43-44 of Carlyle's brilliant and 
soul-stirring essays, which spoke to me 
like the blast of a bugle in the stirring 
battle of life, and of his "Sartor Resar- 
tus," his "Past and Present," and his 
"French Revolution," in all of which he 
exposed and riddled the shams of mod^ 
ern society, and especially exploded the 
modern commercial system, based as it is 
upon the utter selfishness of competition, 
and proclaiming as it does the modern 
Gospel of Mammon : " Every man for 
himself and the devil take the hindmost!" 
But I must hasten on and bespeak your 



4© On the Road to Rome. 

attention while I refer as briefly as possi- 
ble to an incident which caused a sensa- 
tion somewhat like unto the sudden 
bursting of a bombshell in the tent of 
the enemy. 

In the summer of 1844, I was invited 
by the faculty of Kenyon College to de- 
liver an oration at their ensuing com- 
mencement. Accepting this invitation, 
I spent some weeks in carefully prepar- 
ing an oration in which I discussed and 
reviewed the signs of the times, and set 
forth what appeared to me to be the pre- 
vailing tendencies of the age in its social, 
political, and religious aspects. In doing 
this I availed myself freely of the studies 
which, during the preceding five years, 
I had made of Cousin, Lieber, Carlyle, 
and Brownson — and as to the latter I may 
say, in passing, that his essays on syn- 
thetic philosophy, and his profound dis- 
cussions of the political questions grow- 



On the Road to Rome. 41 

ing out of the Dorr rebellion in Rhode 
Island, all of which appeared in the 
Democratic Review in 1842-43, had greatly 
interested me, and led me to take and 
read his Quarterly Review, which he re- 
sumed in 1844 upon his disagreement 
with the editor of the Democratic Review, 
Brownson's views substantially agreed 
with those of Dr. Lieber on the origin of 
society, the constitution of the State, and 
the true theory of constitutional govern- 
ment, which I made use of freely in my 
oration in combating what I considered 
to be the rapid tendency of that day to- 
ward Democratic absolutism, as shown by 
the persistent attempts to break down the 
intermediary, or, as Lieber called them, 
the mediatorial institutions, such as the 
free law-making representative, the inl- 
awed jury, the executive governed by 
law instead of his own will, the indepen- 
dent judiciary, and other like institutions, 



42 On the Road to Rome. 

which were the growth of Christian civil- 
ization, and which should stand between 
the supreme power of the State and the 
subject or individual, insuring the Safe 
generation, expression, and transmission 
by the legislature of the public will in the 
shape of public law, to be wisely inter- 
preted by the judiciary, and firmly bu-t 
legally executed by the executive branch 
— thus avoiding the tyranny of absolut- 
ism on the one hand, and the disruption 
of unrestrained individualism on the 
other hand; and thus, by insuring the 
harmonious co-existence of order and lib- 
erty, solving what Carlyle called the 
hugest problem of modern times. 

I may also say that, progressing in en- 
tire sympathy with my brother in his 
theological studies, I had with him be- 
come a high churchman, and so we had 
begun to lay much stress upon the doc- 
trines of apostolical succession, baptismal 



On the Road to Rome. 43 

regeneration, the real presence, and that 
assertion in one of the Thirty-nine Arti- 
cles "that the Church hath authority in 
controversies of faith." We had even 
come to admit that Luther's so-called 
Reformation was in fact no reformation, 
and that Protestantism was loaded down 
with sad and direful consequences. And 
yet we held that the Roman Church was 
overlaid with errors, while the Anglican 
Church — founded as we fondly fancied by 
St. Paul himself — was a pure reformed 
church ! 

Some of you may remember that just 
at that time (1844), Episcopalians were 
in the highest tension of excitement 
growing out of the agitation of those 
church questions, and the publication in 
England of the celebrated "Tracts for 
the Times," including the famous "Tract 
Number XC," in which Dr. John Henry 
Newman undertook to reconcile the stand- 



44 On the Road to Rome. 

ards of faith of the English Church with 
the creed of Pope Pius IV. This excite- 
ment had been greatly intensified in Feb- 
ruary, 1843, by Dr. Newman's formal re- 
tractation of the charges which he had 
uttered against the Church of Rome and, 
in the September following, giving up 
his living and resigning his office as a 
clergyman, though he was not received 
into the Catholic Church until October 9, 
1845. Bishop Mcllvaine, of Ohio — the 
great gun of the low church party in the 
United States — had added fuel to the 
flames by publishing his book against 
" Oxford Divinity." 

Under these circumstances I appeared 
at the Commencement of 1844, which was 
presided over by Bishop Mcllvaine, and 
was attended by many of the clergy and 
prominent laymen of the diocese of Ohio, 
and by a large crowd of visitors. I ven- 
tured to proclaim church views and theo- 



On the Road to Rome. 45 

ries quite antagonistic to theirs, though 
it is proper to say that I began, and spent 
some time, as already indicated, in point- 
ing out some dangerous and revolution- 
ary tendencies in political and social mat- 
ters — which views met, perhaps, with 
general acceptance, as nearly all of us 
were Whigs of the Henry Clay school. 

But my principal effort was, following 
the teachings of Carlyle, to show the 
horrible results of that famous doctrine 
of "competition and laissez faire" in- 
troduced and advocated by the French 
economists, and adopted and published 
in England by Adam Smith, Mai thus, 
Ricardo, Paley, and Bentham. I summed 
up this doctrine by saying: " Its funda- 
mental principle or starting point was 
'the greatest happiness of the greatest 
number. ' This general result was to be 
obtained by each one 'pursuing his own 
true and substantial happiness' in his 



46 On the Road to Rome. 

own way. Wherefore, each one should 
have the 'largest liberty,' be 'let alone' 
to come and go as he pleased — to buy and 
sell where and what and how he pleased. 
'Enlightened self-interest' would teach 
him to respect the law of maim and tuam, 
and, in seeking a particular, to promote 
the general result. Competition would 
be the life of business, or 'the soul of 
trade,' and straighten out occasional ir- 
regularities. And for the rest, the great 
law of 'supply and demand' would regu- 
late all, and thus restore the lost Eden to 
earth! Was it not," I exclaimed, intend- 
ing to be sarcastic, " a beautiful theory, a 
fascinating vision, worthy of all accepta- 
tion among men?" 

And then I controverted the ultimate 
fact of this theory that man must be 
happy, by declaring with Carlyle that the 
fact of nature is that man is not born to 
be happy here, but is sent into this world 



On the Road to Rome. 47 

to do his duty and get his proper work 
done. Then, after showing with many 
more words that the fundamental assump- 
tion of this teaching was false, I alleged 
that the whole theory in practice goes 
wrong, and then followed a paragraph 
which, on account of its applicability to 
the present time, though written over 
forty-two years ago, I think you will par- 
don me for repeating. I said : 

"And besides, 'enlightened' self-inter- 
est is found to be scarce. The 'demand* 
for it, indeed, is great; while ever an 
abundant 'supply' of mere selfishness re- 
mains, to clash and jar and compete with 
self-interest as best it may. With all pos- 
sible compensatory adjustments, with all 
conceivable checks and balances, by the 
'never so cunning mechanizing of self- 
interests' [though the ingenious device of 
substituting the bell-punch and such like 
cunning mechanical contrivances in the 



48 On the Road to Rome. 

place of sterling integrity had not then 
been thought of], your 'laws of supply 
and demand' and 'laissez faire,' it is 
found, do not feed the hungry, clothe the 
naked, restrain the all-absorbing greed 
of gain and lust of power. Nor yet, as 
Carlyle said, do they solve the problem 
from which they started, and which they 
undertook to solve: 'Given a world of 
knaves, to educe an honesty from their 
united action!' In short, universal 'lais- 
sez faire' and competition, we discover, 
finally turn out to be: Universal liberty 
to cut yourself loose from all men and 
seek your own interest; to suspect all 
men; liberty, therefore, to drive cute 
bargains with Yankee shrewdness, or 
else liberty to die by honest starvation. 
'Laissez faire!' 'Let me alone!' 'Give 
me independence!' so long clamored in 
the world, result at last in establishing — 
not merely in the commercial world — but 



On the Road to Rome. 49 

one relation between men, that of cash- 
payment!. Every one for himself and 
due payment of wages in money; 'cash 
the sole nexus of man to man;' this be- 
ing your highest code of morality, is it at 
all astonishing, if, instead of beholding 
the lost Eden restored, we catch no un- 
certain glimpses of the mean perplexities 
of society, with its fraud and deceptions, 
its shams, its vulpine cunning and clash- 
ing interests, its winkings and blinkings 
at dishonesty and rascality ?" 

And yet, my friends, let me say, in 
passing, that in those days (1844) the in- 
genious money-making business of wreck- 
ing railroads, and virtually stealing them 
from the first subscribers to the stock, 
had hardly begun ; nor had speculators 
yet entered upon the equally ingenious 
and disreputable scheme of " watering" 
the stocks of great companies; nor had 
the sense of morality and fair dealing be- 



50 On the Road to Rome. 

tween man and man become so benumbed 
and depraved as to tolerate dealing in 
"futures;" and as to that diabolical spec- 
ulation in breadstuffs and other neces- 
saries of human subsistence, in which 
one gambler pretends to buy what he 
does not want from another gambler who 
does not own and cannot deliver it — that 
was still an unheard-of atrocity. Nor 
was there then a small army of default- 
ing trustees and bank presidents and 
cashiers and "boodle" aldermen migrat- 
ing in rapid succession to the cities of 
refuge in Canada and elsewhere. Nor 
were there any enormous corporations 
stretching from ocean to ocean, combin- 
ing and " pooling their issues" in order to 
escape the disastrous consequences of 
ruinous competition, and laying a heavy 
hand upon the whole business of a help- 
less community in order to fill their own 
coffers with their stealings. Nor yet 



On the Road to Rome. 51 

were there any gigantic industrial com- 
panies which, in order to increase their 
disproportionate gains, were importing 
ignorant and half-starved Italians and 
Bohemians and the "heathen Chinee," 
to work for half wages, and displace and 
reduce to starvation the laborers of our 
own land. 

And yet the results of competition in 
those days were truly bad enough, espe- 
cially in England, as they were vividly 
described byCarlyle; and they were al- 
ready appearing even in this glorious 
country, where economists had begun to 
stigmatize the unsuccessful laborer as a 
" pauper" and cast him into the poor- 
house — that wretched abode over whose 
portals the sad and gloomy legend should 
be written : " Whoso enters here leaves 
hope behind!" Even then the good old 
common law described by Blackstone as 
to forestalling the market, regrating, and 



52 On the Road to Rome. 

engrossing (which were indictable and 
finable offences), was almost a dead let- 
ter, or in modern phrase had about 
reached the point of "innocuous desue- 
tude"; and, finally, men were beginning, 
in reply to the searching question: 
"Where is thy brother?" to give an an- 
swer like that of Cain: "My brother? 
Am I my brother's keeper? Have I not 
paid him his wages in cash? I have no 
further business with him!" 

And so I said on that commencement 
day at Gambier : " The competitive sys- 
tem is making its ultimate manifestation 
in some all-too-common vagrant Sam 
Slick, who, friendless, unrelated, roves 
over the earth, doing strokes of trade, 
without brother, without home, the in- 
carnation of Individualism. Well may 
we ask," I said, "whither are we tend- 
ing? What kind of a society is that 
' where there is no longer any true social 



On the Road to Rome. 53 

idea extant' — not even an idea of a com- 
mon home, but only of a common lodging- 
house and merchants' exchange, — where 
friendship, communion, is an incredible 
tradition, and love of thy neighbor only 
a thing to be preached of on Sunday !" 

But this " final outcome of the 'greatest 
happiness' principle, or utilitarian the- 
ory, was," I said, "the last wave of the 
movement started by the French econo- 
mists in the eighteenth century" — one of 
its products being the terrible French 
Revolution, which Carlyle characterized 
as a new assertion of man's rights, a 
terrific protest against shams — "procla- 
mation of a truth once more, though a 
truth clad in hell-fire!" and I quoted the 
philosophic historian as maintaining that 
this revolution was not an isolated fact, 
but stands connected with and related to 
the whole past, as well as to the whole 
future, and that, with the rebellions and 



54 On the Road to Rome. 

revolutions in England, "it found its 
point of departure in the Reformation of 
Luther/' And thus having traced the 
modern Gospel of Mammon, with its un- 
restrained individualism, its competition 
and pauperism," and the destructive 



*A striking evidence of reaction against the in- 
human selfishness practised in commercial life and 
defended by heartless economists was presented by 
Prof. Felix Adler in his lecture on February 14, 1895, 
in the School of Applied Ethics, at the Columbian 
University, Washington, D. C, when, among other 
weighty utterances, he said, as reported in the Post: 

Abject Misery on All Sides. 
"I will criticise this principle of selfishness on the 
ground of its actual results. We see abject misery 
every day in spite of the vast fortunes accumulated 
side by side with it ; we see the audacity of our 
trusts, the heartless desertion of public interest on 
the part of the wealthiest, the shirking of the bur- 
dens of taxation on the part of those best able to bear 
it, and the oppression of those least able to bear it. " 

He had previously said, as reported : 

"There are, in my estimation, two ways in which 
the ethical student and worker can speed the moral 
development of industrial society of the present day. 
Assuming as a fact that men in their commercial life 



On the Road to Rome. 55 

revolutions of three centuries back to the 
Reformation, I exclaimed before my audi- 
ence that day : 

" Given your protest against spiritual 
abuses in the sixteenth century, your 
protest against the existence of sacred 
rights between rulers and ruled in the 
seventeenth century, your protest against 



are largely governed by selfishness, it would be the 
function of the ethical student to consider what 
checks can be imposed upon that selfishness and what 
new conditions can be prescribed to soften the harsh- 
ness of economic egotism. The second function 
would be to consider whether in the nature of things 
it is necessary that selfishness should always be the 
leading motive of the commercial and industrial life 
of man, and whether there are not other motives by 
which the world can live that would not dangerously 
affect production, distribution, and consumption ; 
that would not lessen the industrial efficiency of 
mankind, but at the same time elevate the tone of 
those who are engaged in industrial and commercial 
life. " 

If the School of Applied Ethics persistently fol- 
lows out this line of thought to its logical conclusion, 
may we not hope to see it achieving great success in 
bringing back the civilized, otherwise designated as 



56 0?i the Road to Rome. 

all restraint and all authority in the 
eighteenth century, and the protest 
against the existence of any relation 
between men but that of cash-payment 
in the nineteenth century is also ;jiven. 
Did the one necessarily contain the 
other? Perhaps not. But from the one 
to the other we are tugged along by a 



the devilized, world to the salutary practice of the 
Golden Rule as taught by Pope Leo XIII., wherein is 
the sole remedy for the fearful evils that threaten 
speedy revolution and widespread disruption? 

Is it not an encouraging sign of the times that, on 
February 28, 1895, at the regular Thursday afternoon 
lecture of the Catholic University, Washington, 
D. C. , the Hon. Carroll D. Wright, Commissioner of 
Labor, after alluding to what Carlyle called the dis- 
mal science, said : " There is a new and better school 
of political economy in which the old question of 
'will it pay' gives place to the more pertinent ques- 
tion, 'is it right;'" and he held "firmly to the view 
that the Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule, 
faithfully applied by all conditions of society, would 
go a long way toward reconciling the differences be- 
tween capital and labor," adding that "there is no 
safer platform for employer and employee, even on 
the plane of expediency, than the Decalogue." 



On the Road to Rome. 57 

chain that snaps not nor breaks in any 
link. 

14 Reform of whatsoever evil thing is 
upon earth," I added, "is forever a duty. 
Protest against error, falsehood, and 
tyranny is forever necessary. Only it 
, behooves a man to think well of the 
spirit in which he will make it. If his 
protest is made in wrath and hatred, and 
with headlong selfish violence, it may 
become 'denial of divine right as well as 
diabolic wrong.' And then your denial 
of Mother Church becomes denial of the 
divine right of rulers — spiritual and tem- 
poral ; passes into the mitigated form, of 
Presbyterianism, matures into Congrega- 
tionalism, goes to seed in Socinianism, 
and then, naturally flying off into innu- 
merable independent, isolated, hostile 
fragments, ends in cold, horrible selfish- 
ness and ghastly despair." 

Then briefly discussing the "right of 



58 On the Road to Rome. 

private judgment," I said: "Man's con- 
science, his judgment, his belief are his 
own, and by these he must stand or fall. 
In this world of distraction and error, 
what a man shall judge to be right and 
good and true, what with all his heart to 
believe — this is his highest difficulty — 
how blessed if some highest, wisest mind 
would teach him what." 

Ah ! my friends, what painful seeking 
for guidance was therein expressed ! 
What doubts and " questionings of des- 
tiny" would have been saved me had 
I then known the Infallible Church ! 
Thank God, that knowledge was to come. 
But then, all I could say was this: "Pri- 
vate judgment, unchainable as the winds, 
must be exercised. It exists forever a 
sacred right to be exercised. But woe to 
him who, casting away fear and rever- 
ence, in the pride of intellect, or in the 
obstinacy of ignorance, asserts this lib- 



On the Road to Rome. 59 

erty to the length of making his own will 
the supreme law, and his own selfish feel- 
ings his standard of right. There are 
limits here, perhaps undefinable, yet 
real, beyond which it is perilous for man 
to go, yet beyond which he has gone. 
'I stand alone before my God' is a solemn 
truth; yet, not wholly, not lovingly un- 
derstood, it leads to results injurious, in 
the spiritual world, to the highest and 
holiest relations of man to his fellows — 
results which we see all round us in life, 
harmonizing with the wretched results 
of 'universal competition and laissez 
faire.' " 

And then I deprecated the radical con- 
duct of those who " go on asserting this 
right of private judgment to the length 
of abolishing government with the 'Xo- 
government' man; of becoming a law T to 
yourself with the Perfectionist; of find- 
ing in the pure reason the absolute God 



60 On the Road to Rome. 

with the Transcendentalist ; of making 
the absolute God the soul of the universe 
with the Pantheist; and, as the last act 
of this career, of plunging into the bot- 
tomless, wide, wasting whirlpool of 
Atheism." And then, referring to the 
rule of faith recognized by my audience, 
I concluded as follows : 

" And now you will point me, as a 
refuge from all these distractions, to that 
ancient book, the Bible, as containing the 
ground plan of all life and duty, accom- 
panying the act with the declaration: 'He 
is free whom the truth makes free. ' And 
then, with Pilate of old, I ask 'What is 
truth?' And unlike him I zvill stay for 
an answer. Is that necessarily truth 
which one may believe with ever so much 
heartfelt sincerity? If so, then is not 
the sincere Perfectionist, walking with 
the Bible in his hand, right? Is not the 
Transcendentalist who, with awful sin- 



On the Road to Rome. 61 

cerity, finds the Most High God in the 
pure reason, right? Is not every secta- 
rian right who holds his particular view or 
opinion with sincerity? Are, then, truth 
and duty dependent upon the transitory 
feelings and perceptions of each finite in- 
dividual ? Or is it not most certain that 
truth is eternal, at one with itself, and 
possessing a harmonious diversity in 
unity? If this is certain, then does it 
necessarily follow that I, that any iso- 
lated individual, with his diseased will, 
innumerable prejudices, and warped feel- 
ings, will apprehend the whole truth? — 
for the question is not with how little 
truth I can possibly get along. Is it not 
becoming a very general feeling with 
men that each one's belief, formed, as it 
has been, by the unlimited exercise of 
the right of private judgment, and lead- 
ing to the results already -mentioned, 
needs verifying? And do they not feel 



6 2 On the Road to Rome. 

that they cannot with safety appeal from 
their own unauthorized versions of truth 
to the versions of other isolated men 
equally unauthorized? Is it not becom- 
ing the earnest, passionate cry of the 
times : Where is the version that we can 
depend upon? Is it no longer possible 
to discover a manly, noble, god-like rela- 
tion between men, — a principle which 
shall lead to a glorious unity in diversity, 
and bind men together once more in a 
true, loving, universal brotherhood ?" 

Such was the conclusion of my oration 
on that Commencement Day in August, 
1844.* Do you ask how it was received, 



* At the end of my speech, as I left the stage and 
walked down the aisle, I met my friend, Thomas 
Sparrow (brother of Dr. Sparrow, and then a lawyer 
in Columbus), going toward the stage to deliver the 
next oration. He saluted me with the blunt ques- 
tion : "What did you mean by that oration?" Hav- 
ing no time to answer fully, I simply replied: "I 
meant just what I said." "Well, "said he, " I brought 
two orations with me— the best one is on French 



On the Road to Rome. 6$ 

and what was its effect? I can answer 
only in a general way that it was the 
topic of discussion that day at many of 
the dinner-tables in Gambier; and you 
will doubtless not be surprised to learn 
that some of my hearers promptly said : 
" That young man is well on the road to 
Rome." But perhaps 3?ou will be sur- 
prised to hear that, while I w r as appar- 



literature, and the other is on William Leggett, and 
now I am going to give you a counterblast by read- 
ing the one on Leggett. " And so he proceeded to 
eulogize Leggett and shock the feelings of his Whig 
auditors by uttering the most radical Democratic — 
then called "Locofoco" — doctrines. 

At the close of the exercises, as the people were 
going out, the Rev. George Denison (my brother- 
in-law, and my exceedingly low church pastor at 
Newark) , met me with the ejaculation : "Well, Tom 
gave you a good counterblast, and I am glad of it. 
Not that I am a Democrat." "Oh! no," said I, 
"you are a Whig in politics, but unfortunately a 
Locofoco in religion !" And then each went his way. 
I heard that he was greatly annoyed by having to 
admit, in answer to sundry questioners, that I came 
from his parish. 



64 On the Road to Rome. 

ently so near to Rome, it took me yet 
nine more years to get there. * And 
this is the more surprising to myself 
now after again glancing over certain 
articles of Brownson's in his Quarterly 
Review for January, April, and July, 
1844 — all of which I had read, and 
some of w r hich I had carefully studied 
and even quoted from in preparing my 
oration. 

Brownson, I may remind you, had at 



* At this point my conclusion of this address, on its 
first reading before the Institute on January 6, 1887, 
was as follows : 

"The story, however, of my final struggle and tri- 
umph must be written hereafter, if at all. And now 
making my apology for holding you so long, and re- 
turning you my thanks for your patient attention, 
I beg to suggest that, in view of the fact that the act 
of our village minister in 'breaking the Sabbath- 
day' resulted, under God, in bringing two brothers 
into the Church — the elder of whom has brought up 
a son who is now (1887) a Jesuit priest at Woodstock 
[in 1895 President of Georgetown University,] it 
would be a good and wholesome thought to pray for 
the soul of Ahab Jinks." 



On the Road to Rome. 65 

the close of 1843 severed his connection 
with the Unitarians, and come back again 
to Trinitarianism. The publication of 
this fact, and of certain essays of his on 
church questions, had attracted wide at- 
tention, and all those who were watching 
his career — and they were many — were 
curious to see where he would land. 
Prior to 1843 he had published and writ- 
ten most of the articles in the Boston 
Quarterly Review. In the latter part of 
1842, that review having been discontin- 
ued, he wrote for the Democratic Review 
until the close of 1843, when, owning to a 
radical disagreement w r ith the editor in 
discussions about the Dorr Rebellion in 
Rhode Island, he recommenced in Janu- 
ary, 1844, the publication of his quarterly 
in Boston, calling it Brownson s Quarterly 
Review. In the July number he reviewed 
the letters of Bishop Hopkins, of Ver- 
mont, " On the Novelties which Disturb 



66 On the Road to Rome. 

Our Peace," in which Brownson advanced 
serious objections to Anglicanism. At 
that time Dr. Samuel Seabury was the 
great gun of the high churchmen in this 
country, and was the able editor of The 
Churchman — the organ of the high church 
party. In the hope of inducing Brown- 
son to join the Episcopal Church, Dr. 
Seabury replied to his objections to An- 
glicanism, using his most powerful argu- 
ments. To these Brownson replied in 
his October number for 1844, demonstrat- 
ing with unanswerable logic that the An- 
glican Church was schismatic, and an- 
nouncing at its conclusion his conversion 
to Rome, being "happy," he said, "to 
acknowledge the authority of the Holy 
Father." Somehow this logical shot, 
which I shall notice further on, did not 
then demolish the armor with which I 
had covered myself. And so I quit tak- 
ing his Review, much to my subsequent 



On the Road to Rome. 67 

regret, and stuck to our high church, 
pet branch theory. And soon there- 
after becoming involved in the dis- 
tractions of business and practical poli- 
tics, for several years I gave compara- 
tively little attention to the studies 
which had hitherto been so deeply ab- 
sorbing. 

However, as the months and years 
passed on some incidents occurred which 
I recall with interest, and which may be 
mentioned as having had a certain influ- 
ence in the development of my church 
views. The first of these to be men- 
tioned in the order of time occurred while 
I was preparing my Kenyon oration. I 
remember one day (in 1844), while sit- 
ting in my law office in Newark, Ohio, 
with Major Benjamin W. Brice (after- 
ward paymaster-general of the United 
States Army, and now, March, 1887, a 
resident of this city — Washington, 



68 On the Road to Rome. 

D.C.— * together with William D. Wil- 
son and George Peyton Conrad, all law- 
yers, we engaged in the discussion of 
high church doctrines and Puseyism 
(the exciting topics of that time), and as 
I was known to be high church, I was 
asked to state what were the peculiar 
tenets of that school. Having mentioned 
apostolical succession, baptismal regener- 
ation, and the real presence, the discus- 
sion centred upon the latter topic, and 
became somewhat exciting, when Major 
Brice, who did not profess any religious 
belief in particular, though he attended 
the Episcopal Church, astonished us by 
saying, in regard to the Roman Catholic 
doctrine of Transubstantiation, that he 
could not see why one who believed that 
God became an infant in the womb of a 
virgin should have any difficulty in be- 



*Died in December, 1892. 



On the Road to Rome. 69 

lieving that He was present in the Host. 
This was to me a startling way of putting 
the case. For, although I was a firm be- 
liever in the Incarnation, yet, as I recall 
it now, the truth as stated by Major Brice 
had never been presented to me in that 
realistic manner. But the idea took 
lodgment and abided with me. And I 
think you will appreciate my surprise 
when, some twelve years later, after I 
had become a Catholic and had migrated 
to Iowa, while absorbed one day in read- 
ing Father Faber's profound and wonder- 
ful work on "The Blessed Sacrament/* I 
came to this sentence : 

" Multitudes of men believe the Incar- 
nation who disbelieve Transubstantia- 
tion ; yet out of twenty arguments they 
will use against the last, the chances are 
that nineteen would lie equally against 
the first." And on the following page, 
referring to " the curious national frenzy 



70 On the Road to Rome. 

which took place [in England in 1851] in 
consequence of the establishment of the 
Catholic hierarchy in England," in 1850, 
Father Faber mentions how "an infidel 
journal observing upon the fact of Protest- 
ants chalking over the walls [in London] 
'No Wafer Gods,' said that it seemed to 
reasoning men who held themselves sub- 
limely aloof from both parties, an absurd 
inconsistency for those to make any seri- 
ous objection to the Catholic who looks at 
the Host and says it is God, who them- 
selves require you to look into the face of 
a new-born Babe and to believe It is the 
Eternal and Immutable God!" You may 
be sure, when I read that passage away 
off in Iowa, I recalled with some interest 
the remark of my friend, Major Brice, 
made a dozen years before. 

Another incident which I could never 
forget was my first sight of Archbishop 
Purcell. It may have been early in 1846 



On the Road to Rome. 71 

when the report was circulated among us 
that Bishop Purcell was coming to offici- 
ate at the Catholic church in Newark. 
Some five or six of us young lawyers, at- 
tracted by the fame of the bishop's cele- 
brated controversy with Alexander Camp- 
bell, were anxious to see and hear him, 
and accordingly we went to the church at 
the appointed time. This was my first 
entrance into a Catholic church. What I 
saw on this occasion was the poorest 
specimen of a dull brick-and-mortar 
building, with a cold brick floor, plain, 
even rough, seats, a dim light, and a 
small congregation of poor Irish and Ger- 
mans. It was a low Mass, though I did 
not then know one Mass from another, 
and had not the remotest idea what was 
going on about the altar, as I could hear 
nothing, and there was little to be seen 
except the dinginess of the walls and 
floors. It seemed to me a singular way 



72 On the Road to Rome. 

to conduct public worship, for I did not 
then know that the priest was performing 
the highest act of worship by offering the 
unbloody sacrifice upon the altar of God, 
thus fulfilling the prophecy of Malachy 
that "from the rising of the sun even 
unto the going down of the same My 
name, saith the Lord of Hosts, is great 
among the Gentiles, and in every place 
there is sacrifice, and there is offered to 
My name a clean oblation/' 

At last there was a pause, and the 
bishop turned round and faced the peo- 
ple. His presence was not at all impos- 
ing, and his tenor voice, though clear, 
did not at first indicate the orator or man 
of power. My first impression was one 
of disappointment. But this was momen- 
tary. The bishop spoke in a conversa- 
tional tone. He was merely talking; but 
he had not spoken a minute before we 
discovered that it was the talk of a man 



On the Road to Rome. 73 

of intellect, of culture, and deep thought ; 
and we imagined from the line of his 
talk that he knew of our presence, and 
endeavored "to speak to our condition." 
I well remember how, in speaking of the 
completeness of Catholic doctrine, he said 
that even the humblest Catholic, who w T as 
well instructed in the catechism, had an 
immense advantage over even the most 
learned outsider or non-Catholic, because 
the Catholic stood, as it were, at the cen- 
tre of truth, whence he could look out 
in all directions; while even the most 
learned non-Catholic stood as it were on 
a mere point on the outside of the circle, 
and could see only a short distance above 
or beyond on the circumference — the dif- 
ference between outsiders being that the 
greatest or most learned man could see 
just a little further around than the 
others. And then the bishop went on 
to speak of the conquests that this Catho- 



74 On the Road to Rome. 

lie truth was making, mentioning the 
then quite recent conversion of Dr. New- 
man and other Puseyites in England, and 
the great philosopher, Dr. Brownson, and 
others in this country — all of whom had 
sought this central truth, and were happy 
in having gained the illumination of its 
glorious light. Somehow, while this 
grand utterance of the bishop struck 
home to my soul, still I evaded its force 
by fancying that our branch of the Church 
was just as near the centre of truth as the 
Papal or Roman Church. And this illu- 
sion continued with me yet for some 
time. 

Another incident to which I may al- 
lude was connected with the spirit-rap- 
pings which were exceedingly prevalent 
in 1845 and thereafter. It was probably 
due to something I had read in Brown- 
son's writings that I was led to hold that 
these or some of them were manifesta- 



On the Road to Rome. 75 

tions of evil spirits, with which it was just 
as wicked for the Christian to have inter- 
course as it was for King Saul to consult 
the Witch of Endor. It was a curious 
fact that very many, if not the majority, 
of the rapidly increasing multitude of 
Spiritists were people who were not noted 
for any religious belief; and yet here 
they were accepting without question be- 
lief in the agency of spirits which they 
knew nothing about, and had no means 
of determining whether they were good 
or bad. The more this matter of spirits 
was discussed the more I came to see how 
utterly inadequate and barren was the 
Protestant teaching respecting the agency 
of good angels among us. As to the 
consoling and comforting Catholic teach- 
ing in regard to our Guardian Angels,* 



*The Catholic idea of the Guardian Angel is ap- 
propriately and beautifully expressed in the follow- 
ing prayer, which I copy for the benefit of ray Prot- 



7 6 On the Road to Rome. 

I had never heard of it, or at least it had 
never been taught as a thing which we 
ought to believe. And I well remember 
the surprise and pleasure with which I 



estant or non-Catholic readers, if there should be 
any : 

A Prayer to One's Guardian Angel. 

O most faithful companion, appointed by God to 
be my guardian, my protector, and defender, and 
who never leavest my side ; how shall I thank thee 
for thy faithfulness and love, and for all the benefits 
which thou hast conferred upon me? Thou watchest 
over me while I sleep ; thou comfortest me when I 
am sad ; thou liftest me up when I am down ; thou 
avertest the dangers that threaten me ; thou warnest 
me of those that are to come ; thou withdrawest me 
from sin, and excitest me to good; thou exhortest 
me to penance when I fall, and reconcilest me to 
God. Long ago should I have been lost unless by 
thy prayers thou hadst turned away from me the 
anger of God. Leave me not, nor forsake me ever, 
I beseech thee ; but still comfort me in adversity, 
restrain me in prosperity, defend me in danger, as- 
sist me in temptations, lest at any time I fall be'neath 
them. Offer up in the sight of the Divine Majesty 
my prayers and groanings, and all my works of 
piety, and make me to persevere in grace, until I 
come to everlasting life. Amen. 



On the Road to Rome. 77 

read a remarkable passage in a book by 
Frederika Bremer, in the days when her 
books were so popular, contrasting the 
barrenness of belief of the people of her 
day in this regard, and their consequent 
low, dry, and narrow views of life, with 
that of their ancestors who were conscious 
of being surrounded with a world of 
Guardian Angels — of good spirits, and 
also of evil spirits, and to whom it was 
natural to live in a bright world of imag- 
ination teeming with beautiful and soul- 
inspiring legends. 

It was also about this time — perhaps in 
1849 — that an Episcopal clergyman from 
another diocese, during a visit in my 
family where he found sympathetic lis- 
teners, advanced the idea that the Mother 
of our Divine Lord must necessarily have 
been a woman of perfect purity, and en- 
titled to the highest possible honor and 
veneration. This struck me at once as 



78 On the Road to Rome. 

being so reasonable that I thereafter 
wholly rejected the absurd Protestant 
charges against Catholics of Mariolatry. 
And I fully sympathized in this regard 
with the venerable Bishop Philander 
Chase (uncle of Chief-Justice Chase), 
who, after many years of separation, once 
more met a certain Episcopal minister 
who, in the mean time, had printed a book 
to show that the blessed virgin mother 
of Our Lord was the mother of other chil- 
dren ; and when the minister advanced to 
greet him, the old bishop, in the dignity 
of his magnificent presence, repelled him 
with the scornful remark, "You beast!" 
It is needless to add that a little later on 
I had no difficulty whatever in accepting 
the dogma of the Immaculate Conception 
promulgated in 1854 by Pope Pius IX., of 
glorious memory. 

A few words on another matter and 
then I shall come to the culminating 



On the Road to Rome. 79 

point in my progress to Rome. Perhaps 
no prejudice was more deeply imbedded 
in my mind than that of the corruption of 
the Catholic Church in practice, as well 
as its defection in doctrine. And for a 
long time the argument against its claims 
to authority seemed to me to be fair and 
strong that God would not select and 
trust such a corrupt body to act as His 
favored instrument for the promulgation 
of His truth, and the administration of 
spiritual affairs on earth. I cannot now 
recall what author it was who gave a fatal 
shock to this assumption by citing the 
example of the Jewish Church, which, 
with all the errors and crimes of its 
priests, and the dreadful backslidings of 
its stiff-necked people, still remained the 
chosen Church of God, so that even Our 
Saviour Himself, when He had healed the 
leper, said to him : " Go, show thyself to 
the priest and offer for thy cleansing the 



80 On the Road to Rome. 

things that Moses commanded for a testi- 
mony to them." Thus it dawned upon 
me that the agents whom God selects for 
the execution of His divine purposes are 
not guaranteed against erroneous con- 
duct, nor even against the commission of 
sin, but are left, as were Lucifer, the 
brightest archangel, and Adam, with his 
lofty intelligence, to the exercise of their 
free w r ill. And this reasonable view of 
the case went on enlarging until I 
learned that even the Pope, although in- 
fallible when speaking ex cathedra on a 
question of faith or morals, is not impec- 
cable; that, as every intelligent person 
knows, or ought to know, his infallibil- 
ity does not include or imply impecca- 
bility; and that, although he is the suc- 
cessor of St. Peter, and the head of the 
Church, with its two hundred and fifty 
millions of people, yet even he is obliged 
to go down on his knees before his 



On the Road to Rome. 81 

confessor the same as the humblest lay- 
man. 

Thus I have indicated how, from time 
to time, my views and prejudices were 
greatly modified and softened on a num- 
ber of important points pertaining to 
church questions. And yet I continued 
to flatter myself that we high church 
illuminati, who had picked out the first 
four councils as our standards, and had 
settled it that St. Paul had founded the 
Anglican Church in Britain, could safely 
stand upon the branch theory — assuming 
that the Anglican Church (from which 
the American Episcopal Church derived 
its life) was as really a branch of the true 
Church as was the Church of Rome, or 
the Greek Church (for we held that also 
to be a true branch) . In the midst of the 
distractions of business and politics which 
absorbed my attention, I know not how 
much longer I might have rested on this 

6 



82 On the Road to Rome. 

frail assumption, when suddenly, like an 
electric shock, there came to me an epis- 
tle from my brother, who was spending 
the winter of 1849-50 in New Orleans for 
his health, containing these startling 
words : " I am a Roman Catholic in be- 
lief." Of course I was astounded. But 
even the long exposition and argument 
set forth in his letter did not convince 
me ; and I still felt sure that if I only had 
the time and opportunity I could demon- 
strate to his satisfaction that the Angli- 
can Church was the true via media and 
house of refuge, avoiding, as I imagined, 
the disintegrating individualism of Prot- 
estantism on the one hand, and what I 
then considered the liberty -killing abso- 
lutism of the Papacy on the other hand. 

In the heat and enthusiasm of his new 
conviction, my brother soon returned to 
his home in Columbus, expecting to carry 
with him to Rome a number of his de- 



On the Road to Rome. 83 

voted high church friends. But he soon 
found that he had reckoned without his 
host. His advances were met with hor- 
ror and indignation. And the storm of 
opposition was such that he was fain to 
bend under it for a time till the gale 
should be overpast. Of course he was 
not inclined to do any more preaching, 
and indeed the state of his health fur- 
nished a good excuse for his silence. 
Yet during this intermediate state of 
nearly two years — the unhappiest of his 
life — he did preach a few times, and he 
produced one sermon which he delivered 
at Gambier — doubtless with a grim sort 
of pleasure — before the professors, theo- 
logical students, and literati of Kenyon 
College and Bexley Hall, causing a buzz 
and fermentation that lasted for some 
time, and leaving the impression that 
he too was well along on the road to 
Rome. 



84 On the Road to Rome. 

Not long thereafter he delivered the 
same sermon in our church in Newark. 
I noticed it particularly because it showed 
that he had familiarized himself with the 
idea that the Church is a visible corpora- 
tion, an organic body with a life and head 
of its own. Speaking of the popular 
error of making the preaching of faith 
everything, he said : " It is not belief 
merely that imparts spiritual life. We 
must come into organic connection with 
Christ the Head. As the individual is 
united to the head of the race by natural 
generation, so he is united to the Head 
of the Church by spiritual regeneration. 
The life of Christianity is a corporate 
life. God has chosen to provide means 
by which children shall be new-born to 
Him by a principle of continuity and 
reproduction which makes them all one, 
binds them together in one body, and 
through that body to the one Head, even 



On the Road to Rome. 85 

Christ. Thus the Church is a visible, 
organized body. The God-man has taken 
it into union with Himself. He has 
breathed upon it the divine effluence. 
The Holy Ghost has taken up His abode 
in it, and the God-man has promised to 
be with it to the end of time." 

This quotation will suffice to show the 
drift of his thought. He had closely ob- 
served the controversy in 1844 between 
Dr. Seabury and Dr. Brownson, and had 
specially noticed, as I had not, that Sea- 
bury, although invited by Brownson to 
do so, had never replied to Brownson's 
October article in which he argued and 
proved, in reply to Seabury, that the 
Anglican Church was schismatic. Sea- 
bury had admitted, with the Oxford di- 
vines, that the Church was a corporation. 
But he seemed to think he had raised up 
an effectual guard by asserting that a 
" visible centre" and a "visible head" 



86 On the Road to Rome. 

were not essential to the existence of a 
corporate body. To this Brownson an- 
swered by quoting abundant authority to 
show that, while the right of a number of 
persons to act collectively as a corpora- 
tion is invisible, yet the corporation it- 
self is as visible a body as an army. In 
like manner the authority of the Church is 
invisible ; for it is the authority of Christ, 
who is its invisible Head. But the indi- 
viduals composing the corporation, and 
the organs through which it acts, are 
visible ; and this, Brownson said, was all 
the visibility he contended for. And 
then taking the Oxford divines on their 
own principle — that the Church is a cor- 
poration — Brownson held that " the 
Church must needs be one in the unity of 
the corporation, and one in its corporate 
authority, as well as one in the unity of 
faith and charity. Now T if the Church be 
a single body, corporate or politic, as it 



On the Road to Rome. 87 

must be if it is one corporation, and not 
an assemblage of corporations, then the 
Anglicans, in breaking the unity of the 
corporation, as we all know they did, 
were guilty of schism." And "the 
Church of England" being a " distinct, 
independent polity, participating in the 
authority of no other body, but holding 
communion with the authority of no body 
but itself, is, therefore, not a member of 
the Catholic body." It is cut off — schis- 
matic. 

Such was the argument of a portion of 
Brownson's October article, to which Sea- 
bury made no reply, as my brother had 
noticed, and the force and truth of which 
he had admitted in his own mind, al- 
though he was delaying to act out his 
convictions. As he did not, in his ser- 
mon — which we called his "organic ser- 
mon"— go on to argue with Brownson 
that the Anglican Church was schismatic, 



88 On the Road to Rome. 

I most heartily indorsed his theory of the 
Church as an organic body, but I was not 
yet quite ready to take the last step. 
While writing this address I learned from 
him that at the time when he wrote that 
sermon, his mind was greatly impressed 
with the following syllogism : " Every or- 
ganized body must have a head. The 
Church is an organized body. Therefore 
the Church must have a head." This 
brings to mind Father Hecker's mention, 
in his "Aspirations of Nature," of the 
case of a celebrated professor of natural 
history * who, years ago, called on the 
Bishop of Philadelphia, and in a state of 
evident excitement bluntly asked the 
bishop : " Sir ! do you know of any reason 
why I should not become a Catholic?" 
" On the contrary," answered the bishop, 
" I know of many reasons why you 



* Professor Haldemann. 



On the Road to Rome. 89 

should." Having come to a good under- 
standing, the bishop, finding that the 
professor was in earnest, asked him what 
it was that first directed his thoughts to 
Catholic doctrine. "Bugs! Bugs!" was 
the prompt answer. "Bugs," repeated 
the astonished bishop, " what have these 
to do with the truth of the Catholic relig- 
ion?" And then the professor related 
how he discovered one day by the aid of 
a microscope that a family of animalculae 
had a perfect system of an organized gov- 
ernment — with a chief and subordinate 
officers, all acting in unison and perfect 
order. This unexpected discovery led 
the professor to make other observations, 
when he found everywhere in the wide 
field of nature the same law, the same 
form of government, from the meanest 
floweret or insect to the vast system of 
worlds. And then it occurred to him 
that this same system of order and gov- 



90 On the Road to Rome. 

ernment prevailed also in God's spiritual 
government. And then he sought a 
Catholic bishop, and found his proper 
home in the Catholic Church. 

In this matter of the headship my 
brother had got a little ahead of me in his 
progress on the road to Rome, although 
halting for a brief period. But it re- 
quired one more impulse, one more thun- 
der-clap, so to speak, to rouse us both to 
the last effort, and that came in a short 
time to my brother, in the month of 
November, 185 1, in the guise of sickness 
almost unto death. Then he called for a 
Catholic priest that he might be recon- 
ciled to the Church and make his peace 
with God at once. His request was de- 
nied. Then there was a commotion in 
his wide family circle by marriage. And 
it was in the midst of the excitement 
which followed that I went from New- 
ark to Columbus to visit him. Acting as 



On the Road to Rome. 91 

a peacemaker, I was happy to see that 
the excitement was temporarily allayed, 
and I arranged that he should visit me at 
my quiet home at Newark just as soon as 
he could safely get out. In a short time 
this plan was carried out — my expecta- 
tion being that in the peace and quietness 
of my home his excitement would pass 
away, and that by calmly reasoning to- 
gether we would harmonize, as we always 
had done, and meet again on the good 
old via media. Little did I anticipate the 
unanswerable arguments for the Catholic 
Church which he had already mastered, 
and with which he unexpectedly but 
effectually posed me. 

Among other points presented by him, 
it would be well worth a half hour's lec- 
ture to quote the texts from the New 
Testament which he cited and showed 
had either never received any interpreta- 
tion, or had be^n grossly misinterpreted 



92 On the Road to Rome. 

by Protestants, such as: "Thou art Peter 
(a rock) and upon this rock I will build 
My Church, and the gates of hell shall 
never prevail against it"; and especially 
passages in the sixth chapter of John. 
But time does not permit this now, and I 
must hasten on to say that my brother's 
quiet visit to me was soon ended, with 
benefit to his physical health, but with no 
such change as I -expected in his spiritual 
condition. When he returned home he 
lost no time in seeing a priest (Father 
Borgess, afterward Bishop of Detroit), 
and in being received into the Church on 
the festival of the conversion of St. Paul, 
January 25, 1852.* 

*In his letter to The Catholic Columbian, of 
Columbus, Ohio, dated January 25, 1892, and after- 
ward published at St. Paul, Minn., in Pamphlet 
No. 29 of "The Catholic Truth Society of America," 
under the title, "Forty Years in the Church," he paid 
this fervent tribute to the Church in this eloquent 
passage : 

"For forty years I have been studying the Catholic 



On the Road to Rome. 93 

I have thought it proper and needful to 
mention these few details by way of in- 
troduction to the climax in my own prog- 
ress to Rome. For our interviews at 
various times, before, during, and after 
that visit of my brother resulted in the 
discussion of the question of authority, 
and on that matter I could not gainsay 
his experience as an Episcopal minister 
in the various diocesan and triennial con- 
ventions which he had attended during 



Church, both theoretically and practically — its sys- 
tem of teaching, of devotion, and its wonderful or- 
ganization ; and I must say its magnitude, its beauty, 
and its glory have grown upon me continually till I 
am ready to declare that there is nothing like it in 
all the world. It bears unmistakable evidence of the 
divinity of its origin and the superhuman wisdom 
of its organization and development. The only won- 
der is that a system so grand, so venerable, so 
fraught with all that is intellectually great and devo- 
tionally beautiful and attractive should not have 
commanded more attention from intellectual men, 
and more general investigation of claims whose proof 
lies as it were on the surface, and is so easily acces- 
sible to any candid, honest inquirer." 



94 On the Road to Rome. 

the previous ten years, and at the close 
of all of which he found himself and his 
Church just as far as ever from an author- 
itative settlement of a number of "con- 
troversies of faith" which w T ent to the 
very essence and foundation of Chris- 
tianity. Ranging from the lowest low 
churchman to the highest high church- 
man, the variations of doctrine and views 
held by them were numerous, startling, 
irreconcilable. In vain had we looked, 
lo ! these many years, for a realization by 
the Episcopal Church of its famous asser- 
tion " that the Church hath authority in 
controversies of faith/' No such author- 
ity had we been able to find in the Epis- 
copal Church. 

And yet the conviction had grown in 
us to the force of a burning truth that 
that authority must exist and reside 
somewhere in a visible, tangible, recog- 
nizable form, or else Revelation was a 



On the Road to Rome. 95 

sham, the Church a delusion, the world 
simply chaos, and human life not worth 
living! For it all came to this, as was 
once said by an old Presbyterian minis- 
ter, that God having seen fit to create 
man with reason and free will, it is due 
to that creature that means should be pro- 
vided whereby he may infallibly know 
what is the will, the law of God, which 
the creature must obey. Is it reasonable 
to require man to obey a law under pain 
of losing his soul, and yet to leave things 
in such a loose way that no man can ever 
be certain as to what that law is? 

Here is the grand, central starting 
point. Settle this, and all other ques- 
tions which we need to have settled will 
settle themselves. Let the Catholic al- 
ways hold his antagonist rigidly to this 
point until it is settled. If accepted, 
agreement w r ill readily follow. If re- 
jected, controversy is almost useless, es- 



g6 On the Road to Rome. 

pecially on questions of interpretation and 
history, because there is no mutually ac- 
cepted judge to decide, and no mutually 
accepted standard by which to be gov- 
erned. If then it is due to the creature 
that means should be provided whereby 
he may infallibly know the law of God so 
far as it pertains to man's eternal salva- 
tion, it follows that these means have 
been provided. For what God ought to 
do, He certainly does not fail to do. And 
if He has provided the means spoken of, 
then we must be able to find them read- 
ily. For if we cannot find and identify 
them, they might just as well not have 
been provided, and the result must be 
uncertainty, anarchy, chaos. Therefore 
they must be open, visible, ascertainable, 
so that even he who runs may read, and 
the wayfaring man though a fool may 
understand. 

As already indicated by quotations from 



On the Road to Rome. 97 

my Kenyon oration, I had even then out- 
grown the common Protestant notion — so 
deeply and almost ineradicably implanted 
in the Protestant mind — that the Bible 
contains the whole counsel and will of 
God, and that each one must go to that 
fountain for the rule of faith. I had 
asked then, as I ask now: "Does the 
Bible interpret itself?" As well might 
one ask : " Does the volume of statutes 
issued every year by Congress interpret 
itself? Does Congress throw out that 
book and say to each citizen : ' There is 
the law of the land; read it and find 
out for yourself what it means'?" How 
long would it be before the nation would 
be reduced to hopeless and destructive 
anarchy on that scheme? To save the 
nation from this terrible result, Congress 
has, under the Constitution, established 
the Supreme Court of the United States 
to interpret the laws and decide between 



98 On the Road to Rome. 

disputants. And this court is an author- 
ity outside and independent of each one, 
to be recognized, respected, and obeyed 
by each one. 

Now is not the spiritual superior to the 
temporal? Is not the soul above the 
body? Are not the things that concern 
the eternal welfare of the soul of more 
importance than the mere temporal inter- 
ests that concern this short span of life? 
If then the Bible contains the will of God 
concerning the salvation of man, must it 
not be interpreted? For, observe, this 
will or law of God is and must be one and 
the same for all men, in all times; and 
its interpreter must be some one having 
authority objective to each man, above 
each man, and imperative upon all men. 
This view, as a matter of course, excludes 
that other popular Protestant assumption 
that God makes known His will by a spe- 
cial revelation to each one ; for this would 



On the Road to Rome. 99 

virtually constitute each one an authority, 
not only for himself, but for every one 
else. Certainly no one can establish 

absurd a proposition ; for h old you 

prove to me that you had had such a spe- 
cial revelation ; or how could I prove to 
you that I had ? Plainly there never 
could be in this way a common objective 
standard outside of each one, indepen- 
dent of each one, and yet authoritative 
for all. Therefore it follows that author- 
ity must be lodged somewhere outside of 

orself, outside of myself, and yet ac- 
cessible to all and ascertainable by all. 

Where then is this authority lodged ; 
Is it to be supposed that Our Saviour. 
while fulfilling His mission on earth, 
overlooked this matter? How then did 
He arrange it? Of course, while yet on 
earth His word was law to His disciples. 
Did He not also intend that word to be the 
law to all men in all times"" And how 



ioo On the Road to Rome. 

was that law to be made known to men 
except through His disciples? Therefore 
He commissioned them to go into all the 
world and teach all nations. And, strange 
to say, He did not give them even one 
book of the New Testament to start out 
with. And it is a historical fact that the 
latest book of the New Testament was 
not even written till about the last year 
of the First Century, and the Bible itself 
was not collected and authenticated by 
the Church in its official capacity for 
more than three hundred years after the 
Ascension. And yet during those three 
hundred years and more, did not the 
apostles and their authorized successors 
teach the w T ord, the law of God? How 
came they to know it infallibly, and that 
too for a long time without any written 
word? For even the liturgy, as stated 
by Father Thebaud in his great work on 
the Church, although composed, was not 



On the Road to Rome. 101 

written for many years after the Ascen- 
sion, and during the first century, at 
least, every priest had to commit to 
memory the formulas of prayers, rites, 
and ceremonies. Not even the Creed 
and Pater Noster were put on paper or 
parchment. The catechumens had to 
learn them by word of mouth from 
their teachers, as well as everything 
else connected with religion.* 



*The apostles and their immediate successors 
were familiar with the custom of the oral transmis- 
sion of religious traditions which prevailed in the 
sacred colleges of the Jews, the Romans, the Egyp- 
tians, and the Brahmans. A striking example of this 
custom was given by Professor Whitney in his learned 
article on "The Veda" in The Century for April, 
1887, in which, speaking of the Vedic songs, he says : 
" There are more than a thousand of these songs, and 
they contain over ten thousand two-line stanzas — a 
body of text about equal to the two Homeric poems 
taken together." The professor gave it as his opin- 
ion that this collection of Vedic hymns dates from 
about two thousand years before Christ, and he said 
that "this great mass of literature" — including all the 
Vedas — "has been handed down to our time mainly 



102 On the Road to Rome. 

Now was not all this work done in the 
mode prescribed by Our Lord? He prom- 
ised that the Holy Spirit should guide His 
disciples into the truth. When, there- 
fore, they taught what God required of 
men to believe and to do in order to be 
saved, how could they be certain of 
teaching God's will infallibly unless they 
were certainly guided by the Holy Spirit? 
Yet they could not teach a common doc- 
trine without agreement, and they could 
not agree without consultation, discus- 



by living tradition, from the mouth of the teacher to 
the ear of the scholar. The schools of the Brahman 
priesthood . . . are not yet extinct. There is not one 
of the Vedic texts which has not still in India its per- 
sonal representatives, men who, without ever hav- 
ing seen a manuscript of it, can repeat it from begin- 
ning to end, with all its tones and accents, and not 
losing a syllable. " 

In the same way the Creed, the prayers, the Canon 
of the Mass, the hymns, the Psalms, and the ancient 
music to which they were sung, were all known and 
transmitted by the apostles to their catechumens and 
their successors. 



On the Road to Rome 103 

sion, and a final embodiment of the truth 
to be taught in a "form of sound words." 
Thus acted in concert that body — the 
Church — organized by Our Lord to last till 
the end of time. The officers of that or- 
ganic body, having authority to act de- 
rived from Our Lord, were infallibly 
guided into the expression of truth when 
they formulated definitions of faith ; that 
is, prescribed what it was necessary to 
believe and to do in order to be saved. 
And the grand reason why men are 
bound to accept these definitions is pre- 
cisely because the Holy Spirit guides the 
Church, and especially the head of the 
Church — the successor of St. Peter* — 



*In the fall of 1853, while spending several weeks 
in Columbus, engaged on some literary work, I vis- 
ited in the family of Isaac N. Whiting, and was 
urged, by way of arresting my progress to Rome, 
to read the work of Bishop Barrow on the " Supremacy 
of the Pope." I took the volume which was hope 
fully handed me, and undertook to read it. I well 



104 On the Road to Rome. 

into all necessary truth. Thus it is God 
Himself who speaks to us through these 
definitions, made and delivered to men 
authoritatively in this way. Here is di- 
vine authority acting through human in- 
strumentalities. Here is our certainty; 
here is our security. We know in whom 
we believe, and we know what we be- 
lieve. I am just as certain that a dogma 
of the Church contains the truth and ex- 
presses the will of God, as I am that God 
exists. There is and there can be no 
error and no mistake in these dogmas. ' 



remember the interest with which I read the chapter 
in which the bishop quoted every verse in the New 
Testament containing the name of Peter, and I was 
not surprised at his full admission that of the apos- 
tles Peter was primus inter pares. But the bishop's 
subsequent argument against the supremacy of Peter 
struck me as being about on a par with the argument 
of Presbyterians against the Episcopacy, which I had 
long since decided was illogical and untenable. And 
so my progress to Rome was not arrested, but, on 
the contrary, was rather hastened. 



On the Road to Rome. 105 

And not a single instance can be found 
in the whole history of the Church of 
one dogma contradicting another. You 
might just as well expect that the All- 
Wise God would reveal one thing to-day, 
and a totally contradictory thing to- 
morrow. 

Now it is a matter of history that this 
Church was organized and instructed, and 
the doctrines of Christ were preached, 
and branches of the Church were estab- 
lished in all parts of the Roman Empire, 
in Persia and Bactriana, in far India and 
parts of China, and it is highly probable 
that St. Thomas even visited Central 
America, before the latest book of the 
New Testament was written. And it 
was this Church, acting officially, that 
passed judgment upon the numerous gos- 
pels, epistles, and other writings which 
were claimed to be sacred scriptures, and 
rejected many, and selected what now 



106 On the Road to Rome. 

constitute the canon of Holy Scripture. 
And that Church is now, always has been, 
and always will be, during this dispensa- 
tion, the living interpreter of that book, 
as well as the interpreter of divine reve- 
lation outside of that book — the keeper 
and witness of the truth. Consequently 
when a question arises involving faith or 
morals — things necessary to be believed 
or to be done in order to be saved — the 
first duty is to inquire, " What does the 
Church teach?" When the Church, or 
the head of the Church, speaks ex catliedra, 
I must accept its definition just as I would 
accept a direct and properly attested reve- 
lation from God. I must also accept its 
teaching within the domain of discipline 
and official instruction. 

But all beyond that domain and the 
dogmas of the Church, which by the way 
can readily be enumerated — some of the 
most important being: God, the Trinity, 



On the Road to Rome. 107 

the Incarnation, Transubstantiation, the 
Fall of Man, the Hypostatic Union, the 
Seven Sacraments, the Immaculate Con- 
ception, and the Infallibility of the Pope 
— I say all beyond these and the domain 
referred to is free ground, is the region 
of opinion in which the widest freedom 
is allowed consistent with those funda- 
mental truths ; a freedom that is all the 
more perfect and satisfactory because we 
can start out from that centre of truth 
which I heard Bishop Purcell describe as 
radiating principles of absolute certainty 
in every direction, w T hich serve at once 
as chart, compass, and anchor, with a 
beacon light forever illuminated by the 
glorious light from Heaven. 

Without this interpreter, thus divinely 
aided and guided, who could have formu- 
lated with certainty and established the 
doctrines of the Trinity, the Incarnation, 
Transubstantiation, and all the other 



108 On the Road to Rome, 

great truths of Christianity? But with 
this interpreter, and the definitions which 
it unerringly makes, and the traditions 
which it unerringly preserves and trans- 
mits, the humblest layman may find the 
truth with certainty, and the honest 
seeker after truth, however long in wan- 
dering mazes lost, and however fiercely 
storm -tossed upon the ragged edge of 
those questions of destiny which perplex 
and agitate the souls of non-Catholics, 
may easily find, as I found in the sum- 
mer of 1853, a port of safety, a harbor of 
rest, and that sublime peace of soul which 
passes all understanding — a peace which 
is based upon the believer's absolute con- 
viction and certainty that the dogmas and 
points of faith of the Church flow logically 
from belief in God, thus verifying the 
famous saying of the French philoso- 
pher, Proudhon, who thought he was an 
atheist, but said: " Admit God, and the 



On the Road to Rome. 109 

Roman Catholic Church, with its dogmas, 
is the logical consequence." 

" Admit God!" As if a man of any 
sense could do otherwise. On this point 
let me say a word. Obviously all my 
remarks have assumed the existence of 
God, and have been addressed to those 
who admit it. What then can I say to 
those unfortunate persons who assent to 
the assertion of agnostics that you can- 
not prove God, and therefore relegate 
that idea to the region of the " unknow- 
able"? My answer shall be given in a 
few words from Dr. Brownson, who, in 
1873, said:* " Though reason is competent 
to prove the existence of God with cer- 
tainty when denied or doubted, as we 
think we have shown, it did not, and per- 
haps could not, have originated the idea, 
but has taken it from tradition, and it 



* Works, vol. ii., p. 97. 



no On the Road to Rome. 

must have been actually taught the first 
man by his Maker Himself." " If," then, 
as Brownson said in his review of Wil- 
liam Francis Newman's essay on the 
soul,* "the human mind is unable to 
generate the belief in God," and "if we 
can have it only as we are taught it, we 
must either assume that God Himself has 
first taught us, or else suppose an infinite 
series of teachers. Your father may have 
taught you, but who taught him? His 
father. But who taught his father? 
These questions may be continued to in- 
finity, and we must either assert an in- 
finite seri.es of teachers, which is an 
infinite absurdity, or we must stop with 
the first man, the commencement of the 
series of generations, and then arises the 
question, Who taught the first man? 
God Himself, is the only answer conceiv- 



* Works, vol. i. , p. 265. 



On the Road to Rome. in 

able, and then God really is; for if He 
were not, He could not teach His exist- 
ence, since what is not cannot act. This 
is historically the way in which the be- 
lief has actually originated. God taught 
the first man His own existence, and the 
belief has been perpetuated to us by the 
unbroken chain of tradition.'' Thus the 
human race came into possession of the 
idea and has never lost it, and never will 
lose it. Therefore it was true in the 
days of old, and it is true to-day, that only 
the fool hath said in his heart there is no 
God. Furthermore the very fact of the 
existence in the mind of man of the idea 
of God, as argued by St. Anselm and 
Brownson, is unanswerable proof of the 
existence of God.* 



* At last that famous "unknowable" theory, which 
during the last twenty years or more has played so 
conspicuous a part in the writings of "scientists," 
and has exerted such a widespread demoralizing in- 



1 1 2 On the Road to Rome. 

I may here appropriately add the re- 
mark of Father Faber, in regard to the 



fluence in ail " civilized" society, has itself been hap- 
pily relegated to the region of darkness from which 
it came. For confirmation I refer to two remarka- 
ble articles — one, the profoundly scientific and criti- 
cal address of Lord Salisbury, president of the Brit- 
ish Association, at its last annual meeting (see 
Popular Science Monthly for November, 1S94), and 
the other, the no less profound and learned article in 
the Revue ties Deux Mondes for January, 1895, 
headed "After a Visit to the Vatican," written by the 
editor, M. Ferdinand Brunetiere, embodying his re- 
flections suggested by his interview with the Pope on 
the 27th of November, 1S94, when the principal sub- 
was the question, "How far has the advance of 
science crowded out religious faith?" After pointing 
out the "bankruptcy of science" in its failure to re- 
deem its promises to furnish man with the only means 
he has for ameliorating his lot, the editor said, as 
translated and digested by The Literary Digest: 

"No one can deny that the physical or natural 
sciences have promised to suppress 'mystery. ' Not 
only have they not suppressed it, but we see clearly 
to-day that they never will throw light on it. They 
are powerless — I will not say to resolve, but even to 
give a hint of a solution of questions of the utmost 
importance to us : these are the questions relating to 
the origin of man, the law of his conduct, and his 
future destiny. The unknowable surrounds us, en- 



On the Road to Rome. i 1 3 

idea of the Incarnation, that neither men 
nor angels — "not even the highest an- 



velops us, constrains us ; and we cannot get from the 
laws of physics or the results of physiology any 
means of knowing anything about this unknowable. 
I admire as much as anybody the immortal labors of 
Darwin. . . . Yet, whether we are descended from 
the monkey, or the monkey and ourselves have a 
common ancestor, we have not advanced a step 
toward knowing anything about the origin of man. 
Neither anthropology, nor ethnology, nor linguistics, 
has ever been able to tell us what me are. What is 
the origin of language? What is the origin of soci- 
ety? What is the origin of morality? Whoever 
[evidently meaning the scientists referred to], in 
this century, has tried to answer these questions has 
failed miserably. And every one [of the same class] 
who hereafter shall try to answer these questions 
will fail as miserably, because you cannot conceive 
of man without morality, without language, or out- 
side of society ; and thus the very elements of the 
solutions are beyond the reach of science. 

"It is clear that the fact that science, after long 
trying, has been unable to aid us in any way in living 
proper 1 j'has been recognized by a great multitude of 
persons. This is proved unmistakably by the litera- 
ture of the last few years. There has been an un- 
deniable change in the sentiments of both writers 
and readers. The present situation may be summed 



114 O n t ne Road to Rome. 

gelical intelligence could have conceived 
it without a revelation from God; and 
Scripture pictures the angels to us as ever 
bending over and looking into this mys- 
tery to feed their love, their wisdom, and 
their adoration out of its depths of glory 
and sweetness/' 

That remarkable and glorious title of 
Our Lord— "The Angel of the Great 
Council" — derives its significance from 
that one of the councils of eternity char- 
acterized by the decree of the Incarna- 
tion, which, as many theologians teach, 
preceded the permission of sin, was the 
first act of the Trinity ad extra — outside 
of itself, and was the beginning of all 
creation, as declared by St. John in that 
magnificent opening of his gospel: "In 
the beginning was the Logos — the Word, 



up in a very few words : Science has lost its pres- 
tige, and religion has reconquered a part of its 
own." 



On the Road to Rome. 1 1 5 

and the Word was with God, and the 
Word was God. The same was in the 
beginning with God. All things were 
made by Him, and without Him was made 
nothing that was made" — the angels, the 
countless worlds, and man himself. And 
thus, as Father Faber says in " The 
Blessed Sacrament" (Book IV., Section 
III.): "The Incarnation lies at the bot- 
tom of all sciences, and is their ultimate 
explanation. It is the secret beauty in 
all arts. It is the completeness of all 
true philosophies. It is the point of ar- 
rival and departure to all history. The 
destinies of nations, as well as of individ- 
uals, group themselves around it. It 
purifies all happiness, and glorifies all 
sorrow. ... It is the great central fact 
both of life and immortality, out of sieht 
of which man's intellect wanders in the 
darkness, and the light of a divine life 
falls not on his footsteps. 



u6 On the Road to Rome. 

" There never has been in the world a 
power like to this power of the Incarna- 
tion. None which has wrought such 
changes, or brought about such tremen- 
dous revolutions. None which has gath- 
ered to itself such enthusiastic loyalty, or 
for which men have been so eager to lay 
down their lives and to shed their blood. 
None which has allured such a vast 
amount of holiness to adorn it, or of con- 
summate intelligence to propagate and 
defend it." 

And yet " the Incarnation is not simply 
a past fact ; it is the living life of the In- 
carnate God. It is not merely the glory 
of the theological schools ; it is the sacri- 
fice of the daily altar. On earth as well 
as in heaven, Jesus Himself is the pres- 
ent centre round which all the elements 
of the world of the Incarnation are per- 
petually revolving. . . . Nothing will 
explain the phenomena of the Church, 



On the Road to Rome. 117 

nothing will interpret its history, or ac- 
count for its miraculous propagation and 
preservation, except the Blessed Sacra- 
ment" As it is the life of the Church, so 
is it the life of the individual, and be- 
comes to every worthy communicant the 
seed of immortality whereby the lost 
image of the Word made flesh is restored 
to man, and the perfection of his nature 
is realized by participation in the divine 
life. 

When at last I saw the truth, I could 
well exclaim with St. Augustine: "O 
Eternal Truth! Ever ancient and ever 
new ! Too late have I known Thee ! Too 
late have I loved Thee!" 



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